Category Archives: Stanley Kubrick

The cold, dark and vast vacuum of IndyCar’s off season is finally about to be penetrated – ironically, not on Florida’s space coast, but rather in the western city of St. Petersburg. Spinning, revolutions and centrifugal forces will be on full display during this important inaugural mission of 2018.

No, you’re not tripping. The Firestone Grand Prix will see the most colossal class of rookies since the dawn of man. Aping the veterans, they’ll be strapping into brand new rocket ships for the first time next weekend. An asteroid sized chunk of the field has never raced an IndyCar in anger, much less in the unforgiving confines of St. Pete. These FNGs’ race odyssey begins in earnest with the blastoff of a new age in IndyCar.

Most of this generation were in diapers in 2001, as were their parents in 1968 when Kubrick’s mind blowing film 2001: A Space Odyssey debuted in theaters. Considering their boundless inexperience, let’s just hope come Sunday they don’t forget their friggin’ helmets.

With Kurt Bush being investigated for domestic assault, brawling becoming commonplace on NASCAR pit lane and Tony Stewart’s accidental killing of young Kevin Ward, 2014 has provided a chilling look into the bleak future of racing, much less society. It is American society that is the target audience of this madness and of course a certain segment eats it up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. While many movies may come to mind when pondering the troubling state of NASCAR – Rocky, The Jerry Springer Movie, or even Idiocracy – it seems compellingly clear instead that NASCAR has morphed into ‘A Clockwork Orange’ series.